Woman's boyfriend won't stop telling her she has bad B.O.
By Robin ZlotnickJune 10 2020, Updated 9:06 a.m. ET
In a viral Reddit "Relationships" post, a woman explains that she has been with her boyfriend for over a year and that every single day, he tells her at least once that she stinks and smells of B.O.
She has always showered, used deodorant, and brushed her teeth every day. But her boyfriend's comments have made her so paranoid about her smell that now she showers at least twice a day, applies "industrial strength" deodorant every few hours, wears perfume, and brushes her teeth any time she eats or drinks anything that isn't water.
"I feel like I'm going crazy," she writes. She doesn't think that she's ever smelled bad, and it's gotten to the point where she's had doctors tell her nothing is wrong and friends and family who have confirmed that she doesn't smell bad.
Even so, her boyfriend won't cuddle her when he says she smells bad, and she doesn't know what to do. It doesn't make any sense, and it's driving her insane.
"Either it's just one of those times where you smell bad to him, and to him only," one commenter wrote. "Or he's doing this on purpose to avoid intimacy or control you are something."
"Either it's just one of those times where you smell bad to him, and to him only," one commenter wrote. "Or he's doing this on purpose to avoid intimacy or control you are something."
She decided to confront him about it. "It was less than an hour after waking up that he said, 'God you stink,'" she wrote. But she had already showered and put on deodorant. So she snapped.
She asked him exactly what he was smelling, she writes, "because, at this point, I'm one of the cleanest people on the planet and if I smell bad to him then we should just break up."
That's when he "came clean," so to speak. He panicked and got upset and eventually revealed that his father did the same thing to his mother and told him that it was "a sure-fire technique to have a woman never leave you because 'she will feel too low to cheat, will love only you, and will always be clean.'"
OP broke up with him immediately. She was feeling like she was going crazy because he was gaslighting her and purposely making her feel that way. The woman was showering multiple times a day and brushing her teeth after eating or drinking anything. She was being controlled for no reason by this guy. It's abuse, it what it is.
And commenters agreed. "His father basically groomed him to be an emotional abuser," one person wrote. "So glad you ended that; hopefully he learns from this."
"Your edit shows how utterly pathetic and manipulative he is," another person wrote. "How disgusting of him. He drove you insane and caused you emotional distress and didn’t even bat an eyelash. Him and his father are pieces of s--t. Get rid of him, and tell his sorry ass to go get therapy and stop being such an emotionally abusive trash can. Yuck. Go take care of yourself love. And breathe."
I don't know OP, but I'm proud of her for hightailing it out of that toxic situation as soon as she figured out what was going on. That man has a lot of unlearning to do if he ever wants to know how to treat a partner with respect.